April 1 was the first day of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. It’s also the day the Department of Health And Human Services fired the teams that work on sexual violence prevention.
The layoffs were part of a round of dramatic cuts to the federal health agencies, amid the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s efforts to shrink the federal workforce.
Most of the Division of Violence Prevention staff was fired, according to multiple sources, including current and former staffers. The division is part of the Injury Center at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At the same time, the leader of another HHS agency that works on domestic violence, the Office of Family Violence Prevention and Services, was placed on administrative leave.
Congress mandated the work these agencies do, which includes supporting state and local programs on sexual assault around the country. Those laws, including the Violence Against Women Act, have had bipartisan support.
The timing of the layoffs was “a combination of heartbreaking and insulting,” says Matthew Huffman of the Missouri Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, a membership association of domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers around the state.
He says that the current situation is confusing and stressful for local groups, who rely heavily on federal funds for their work. Without federal staff in place to administer the funds and support them, “it leaves a huge gap in our ability to really be effective.”
“Even in a red state, we’ve never had issues with getting our work through,” says a Midwest state health official who NPR agreed not to name because she fears retaliation for speaking with the media. “It’s not a super controversial thing — you don’t want your daughter to be raped in college, right?”
In response to NPR’s question about how sexual violence prevention funds will be distributed now that these teams have been cut, HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard wrote: “All statutorily required positions and offices will remain intact, and as a result of the reorganization, will be better positioned to execute on Congress’s statutory intent.”
Decades of experience ‘wiped out’
One of the fired CDC employees estimates that two-thirds of division staff were fired last week, about 100 people, based on crowdsourced documents and her knowledge of the division’s staffing. NPR agreed not to name her because she fears retribution for speaking with the media.
The division works on prevention strategies for sexual assault, childhood abuse and gun violence among other forms of violence. Research and programming staff in all these areas got cut.
The CDC employee says that even though there has been bipartisan support for these efforts in the past, she was not surprised that the programs focused on sexual violence were cut.
“We had an inkling,” she says. “A lot of our work is looking at gender-based violence and gender disparities and health equity and all of that quote-unquote ‘woke ideology,’” she says, which has been a major target in the second Trump administration.
As an example of its work, the CDC has helped fund and evaluate the mapping of “hot spots” where students feel unsafe and vulnerable to sexual assault so schools can intervene. In Colorado, hot spot maps lead some schools to add lights and cameras in certain places and relocate locker rooms.
CDC can guide community partners in their programs and help them evaluate the impact. “We have the ability, we have the infrastructure, we have the expertise to figure out what works to prevent sexual violence,” the CDC employee says.
Another fired CDC staff member says she was surprised that some parts of the Division of Violence Prevention were preserved, including the surveillance branch. That made the cuts to her team feel more targeted.
“I think [it] tells a story about what was important in terms of what they think CDC should do,” she says. NPR agreed not to name her for fear of retribution. “The story it tells me is that violence prevention doesn’t matter, that women in abusive situations don’t matter, that women who have been sexually assaulted don’t matter.”
She says she and her colleagues feel “gutted” by the cuts. “All of us are just reeling, trying to figure out what we do next,” she says. “This wasn’t just a job for us, this was something that we were all passionate about.”
Without the federal government supporting these efforts across the country, state and local groups are on their own, says Lynn Rosenthal. She was HHS director of sexual and gender-based violence under the Biden Administration and has also worked as an advocate with the National Network to End Domestic Violence and as the director of a local rape crisis center.
“Decades — literally — of work will be lost as a result of the Division of Violence Prevention being wiped out in this way,” Rosenthal says. She explains that the reason why there is a federal role in preventing and intervening in domestic violence and sexual assault is because states needed help with funding and program design and evaluation, and asked for federal action.
The CDC teams that were cut helped local groups “learn what’s working and what’s not working — what should we try?” she says. “They’re very generous with convening people around the country to try to learn from their experiences.” The fact that they’ve been fired, she adds, is “a great loss.”
Local groups nervous about federal funds
Congress recently appropriated $210 million for local grants over five years for the Rape Prevention and Education Program at CDC. However, since the staff that distributed the funds and advised on the projects has been fired, the money may be hard to access.
In state health departments, “we’re in a holding pattern because they didn’t end the money yet, but if there’s no one there to distribute the funds, then we’re not sure if we’ll have the money to actually pay for our staff [or] if we’ll be able to draw down our funds,” says the health official in the Midwest.
This funding was already interrupted in the first weeks of the Trump administration, when the White House paused all domestic spending, causing some Texas shelters to lay off staff.
Huffman at the Missouri Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence says that the current situation is confusing and stressful for local groups. “Here in Missouri, many of our domestic violence agencies rely on that funding for anywhere from one-half to one-third of their overall operating budget,” he says.
A group of congressional Democrats sent a letter to Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Friday to express concern about these cuts. “We ask that you immediately rescind the reduction in force for these important initiatives, and explain how you will ensure that these programs continue to operate effectively,” they wrote.
Several Republican lawmakers who have sponsored related legislation in the past did not respond to NPR’s request for comment about the cuts.
One of the fired CDC employees worries that funding might not get out the door because of paperwork problems. “I don’t know what that’s going to look like,” she says. “What I do know, though, is that the field is very strong. We are made up of advocates — that is the heart of who we are — and so I expect that there will be some barnstorming.”
Have information you want to share about the layoffs and restructuring across federal health agencies? Reach out via encrypted communications: Selena Simmons-Duffin @selena.02
